Thursday, June 14, 2012

Love Your Body

I love one part of my body above all others, and it’s not my
armpits.

Really, does anyone
love armpits? My guess would be no. I don’t just hate my own armpits; I hate
everyone else’s, too. As I’ve mentioned, this is why basketball will never be
my favorite sport, or even a sport of which I can stand to watch more than one
minute. Unless you have some weird armpit fetish and nothing gets you going
quite like a freshly shaved underarm, my guess is you also hate them, whether
you’ve ever consciously thought about it or not.

And now I’m going to get all kinds of hits for people seeking
armpit porn. Awesome. But armpits are
not what I came to talk about today.

I came to talk about how much I love my hands.

I think every woman - and maybe even every man - has at least one body part she
absolutely hates and would do anything to change. Society puts so many
unrealistic expectations out there for body image – thinner, firmer, taller,
blonder – that it’s almost impossible to love ourselves completely anymore,
which is terribly sad. A society that makes us hate ourselves? Let’s focus on
what we love instead.

I love my hands. I love that I have long fingers. I love
that little scar on the first knuckle of my left index finger – I don’t even
remember how I’ve got it, it’s been part of my hands for so long. I love that I
have strong fingernails that I usually ignore, that grow long and elegant until
I at last have to clip them off so I can keep writing.

I love that my ring fingers don’t really bend at the last
knuckle. I don’t know why they don’t, or when they got like that; I never
noticed them till high school. They don’t even have flex wrinkles, they bend so
little. It’s a weird thing, but it’s my
weird thing, and I love it.

What do you love about your body? Focus on that, rather than
on socially mandated hatred.